More and more information is being placed on the Internet as a means of distributing the information efficiently to potentially interested consumers. One example of this is calendars or listings of community events.
There are two commonly used methods for distributing information about community events using the Internet. The first method is providing a bulletin board style web page in which community event information may be uploaded to a server and displayed on a web site. These systems may simply list events and, possibly, allow for easy sorting by parameters such as location and event type and searching by keyword.
A second method is operating an electronic mailing list associated with a database of event information. The mailing list allows notifications of events to be transmitted to consumers that have registered with the mailing list, part of the registration being to provide criteria of what events the consumer wishes to be notified of.
One drawback of both of these methods is that they require significant personal interaction and are generally not convenient nor effective for the ultimate recipient. The bulletin boards require a consumer to periodically access the bulletin board to identify new events that may be of interest. This may require a review of hundreds of events on the bulletin board.
The mailing list method is also time consuming as the consumer receives and must evaluate each communication from the mailing list, many of which may not be of interest to the consumer. Furthermore, the consumer may not receive notification of events that would otherwise be of interest. Thus, a need exists for a more efficient way to provide consumers with event information.